These last few hours had been the most wonderful, and the most
crowded--yes, quite literally the most crowded--that he had ever
experienced. At last he had really taken part in the life of his people,
and had come into direct contact with things very diverse and
contradictory, representing the popular will. He had talked with street
urchins, and visionaries, had rubbed shoulders with men of brutal habit
and vile character,--with knaves, cowards, fools; he had been shut up
with drunkards and pickpockets, policemen's thumbs had left bruises upon
his arms, and all his mind was one great bruise from the bureaucratic
police system which had him fast within its grip.

Now at last he knew that he knew nothing; for only now did he realize
it. To what was going on outside his ears had been stopped with official
lies; morally, intellectually, and physically he was a prisoner, just as
much as when, to the cry of "Old Goggles," from a jeering crowd, he had
marched captive to the police-station. He knew now that even his private
life was watched and spied on--always, of course, with the most
benevolent intentions. This was the price he paid for modern kingship;
and what was it all worth?

Out of his pocket he drew a small sheet of crumpled paper. In order to
get this to him, a poor, timid woman had gone out into a raging crowd,
had borne its brutality for hours, and then, a piteous bundle of broken
nerves, had by sheer accident accomplished that which hundreds of
others, braver, abler, more confident, and more deserving, had tried to
do and failed. Morally this small slip of paper had upon it the blood,
and the tears, the sweat, the agony, and the despair of all the rest;
and only by accident had he ever come to know of it!

Here, almost within a stone's throw of his palace, he had seen something
taking place which to-morrow the papers would deride, and of which the
official world would deny him all cognizance. Whether these women had
truly a grievance, any just and reasonable cause for complaint, he did
not know. But he knew now that, with the most desperate earnestness and
conviction, that was their belief, and that in getting their petition to
his hands they saw the beginning of a remedy.

He spread out the paper before him, and for the first time read the
words--

"Humbly showeth that by your Majesty's Ministers law and justice are
delayed, and prayeth that your Gracious Majesty will so order and govern
that your faithf